


stars above us

by loyaulte_me_lie



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Red White & Royal Blue - Casey McQuiston
Genre: Crack Treated Seriously, Crossover, Established Relationship, M/M, Slice of Life, well ish
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-02
Updated: 2019-07-02
Packaged: 2020-06-03 00:10:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,425
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19452364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/loyaulte_me_lie/pseuds/loyaulte_me_lie
Summary: Steve and Alex meet at a boring White House party and talk about their boyfriends. That's it. That's the fic.





	stars above us

**Author's Note:**

> Hi this is fluff I promised Marie, here you are darling friend! Please ignore ALL timelines, just assume that Bucky was in the wind after Winter Soldier for a couple of years and Civil War (and everything that came after) never happened. Title from "Moonshine" by LIGHTS. 
> 
> **May 2020** : this piece has been edited for clarity and streamlining because I am procrastinating :D.
> 
> As usual, I don't *think* there are any triggers, please advise me if I am wrong and I will change this warning. Enjoy!

**April 2021**

Contrary to popular belief, Alex Claremont-Diaz has never actually _met_ Captain America. Reality, however, is not something the internet gives much of a shit about - a good portion of his fandom pre-Henry was pretty insistent that not only had Alex _met_ Captain America, but that they'd also had totally steamy sex in a wide variety of implausible places. It was alarmingly prescient, considering the whole coming-out-as-bi thing which no-one knew about, and then the thing he has for blondes - well, one very particular blonde - but he guesses the internet is weird that way. Fandom’ll ship anyone who’s pretty and standing still long enough.

Flattering as it all was back in the day, he is not and has no intention of screwing Captain America, not only because he’s in a committed relationship with the love of his life, but also because see above: he’s never actually met the man. The Avengers have all been to the White House on a number of occasions, but life and scheduling and all Alex's onerous responsibilities as then First Son and now First Son and Royal Suitor have been unhelpfully getting in his way. Oh well. It's not like he can really complain because Captain America apparently is here tonight - "here" being an event with a million senators making a million speeches that Alex would usually be all over but less so today considering the fact that none of the fun politicians showed up (cough cough Rafael Luna, not naming names Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez).

Also, Henry has been texting him increasingly dirty things from a delayed flight. This is a charming thing to do to one’s boyfriend when one’s boyfriend is in the process of making nice to a whole load of boring, amoral, and influential people. He doesn’t even have Nora and June to make sarcastic comments to because they abandoned him for the lure of Pez and Lagos, traitors. He has been on the sly lookout for Captain America because that really would make the whole event so much better but the rumours are either hugely inflated or Captain America has obtained an invisibility cloak because Alex has seen neither hide nor hair of him all evening.

He excuses himself from the group conversation on exploitative farming practises - god, you can't even make this stuff up - and heads in the vague direction of the bathrooms to get away from all the old white people intent on having boring conversations or unsubtly bringing up the whole email-leak thing. Certain demographics evidently haven't got the etiquette memo on, you know, _not_ bringing up the worst days of a person's life to their face within ten minutes of meeting them. Sometimes he can't believe these people are his country's political elites, but the mid-terms are soon and times are changing. It's no biggie. He'll put up with it, practise toeing the line between acceptable sarcasm and giving offence.

A small, quiet part of him wishes Henry were here. People don’t bring these horrid things up in the presence of six foot two of white British accent and royal posture, but apparently Alex isfair game. 

The gender neutral bathroom - one of the first things his mother changed about the public areas of the White House, bless her soul - is empty. Alex adjusts his tie in the mirror, then sinks down on the sofa in the little retiring area to check his phone. Henry hasn’t replied to the last message which probably means that the plane has managed to take off, finally. Thunderstorms having tantrums in the vicinity of airports is a problem that not even royal authority can solve, much to Alex's disappointment. He hasn't seen Henry in nearly two weeks because _duty_ and he was looking forward to blowing off tonight in favour of blowing something else. 

He starts scrolling through Twitter instead, keeping up to date with what the fun politicians are _actually_ doing with their evenings (ie) their incredibly important jobs, and thinking about the project Mom offered to set him up on. He adores helping Henry with the Princes Trust, but he kind of wants his own thing too, wants to be an equal not just a help-meet. Mom had sat him down one day rare day she’d _actually_ made it back to the residence for dinner and offered him the chance to be a lead on a proposed partner to the Princes Trust helping LGBTQ+ refugees. Apparently it'll give him something to do before law school starts in the fall that doesn't include loafing around people's offices annoying them, living it up in NYC, and spending far too many hours in bed with Henry. Her words, not his. It will also apparently give him a productive-looking reason to be in NYC. Mom is brutal, but to be fair she had a point. And now he has choices a big half-assembled list he could get back to before Henry arrives to distract him and...

The door swings open, and a guy in a sharply-ironed khaki dress uniform walks purposefully in, stops when he sees Alex lounging on the sofa with the air of a man who had also banked on an empty bathroom to escape irritating conversations. Alex looks up from his phone, blinks through the buzz of the champagne (of which he has not drunk too much, excuse you), and realises just who it is.

“Hi,” he says, then because June’s right and he’s an idiot, “You’re Captain America. Fun party, eh?”

“Alexander Claremont-Diaz,” Captain America replies with a polite, journalist-and-bullet-proof smile, and Alex gets a little fizzle of warmth that the literal ultimate American icon recognised him. Which is also stupid because of course Captain America recognised him because Alex’s face has been _plastered_ across the news cycle for the last four years, and _especially_ in the last of those because spectacular media sex scandal, _hello_? “And well, yes it’s…”

“When I said fun, I kind of meant stab myself in the foot to get out of,” Alex interrupts, and Captain America actually huffs a laugh, his public face slipping a little.

“Well, better boring than a PR slip-up,” Captain America shifts, and some of the many medals on his chest jingle.

“Guess that’s why they don’t send Tony Stark anymore.”

“I volunteer to _stop_ Stark going,” Captain America says, but there’s a general air of fondness in his voice. “Keeps everyone just a little bit saner.”

“Sane is generally a good thing,” Alex stretches. Henry still hasn’t messaged. That's a good sign. “Don’t think he’s been in here since the Obama administration. Mom likes Pepper Potts, though, but I think they just bonded over being kickass women who take no prisoners.”

“Pepper is kickass,” Captain America says, then, awkwardly shuffling again, “I don’t want to impose, but do you mind if I hang out in here a bit longer? I can listen to a podcast if you don’t want to be disturbed, but there are these two women who keep _cornering_ me and…”

“Oh god, I know the type,” Alex shudders. “Well, we can stay and haunt the bathroom none of the cisheteronormative people want to come into, or we can go hang out on the Truman Balcony if you want. It’ll be more private.”

The naked relief on Captain America’s face is kind of hilarious, and Alex totally tries to play it like it’s a chill thing rather than an occasion to actually hang out and make friends with one of the coolest people in history. Alex totally used to _love_ the story of Captain America when he was growing up. Now, he wonders whether his appreciation wasn’t just academic, but he guesses he’ll never know. Such are the perks of coming out in your twenties.

“Thank you,” he says in a flatteringly relieved tone of voice. Alex grins at him.

“No worries man. Just need to let my security detail know I’m running off with Captain America, give me a sec…”

“Steve. You can call me Steve.”

Alex feels that flush of happy warmth like a kid showered with praise again, and hides his grin. Henry is not going to _believe_ this. “Okay, Steve. Give us a moment.”

He tracks down Amy which is not hard, considering she’s planted herself on a chair opposite the bathroom door, and tells her where he’s going. “Captain America can protect you better than I can if something happens,” she says. “Have fun. I’ll come and find you when His Royal Highness arrives.”

*

The Truman Balcony is quiet, and Alex snags another bottle of whiskey and two glasses from waitstaff on the way up, kicks out one of the chairs for Steve and slouches into the other one, putting his feet up on the rail.

“Whiskey?” he asks.

“Can’t get drunk,” Steve replies, sitting down with the kind of posture that would have made Alex feel awkward if he hadn’t been with Henry who actually had books-on-head deportment lessons as a child.

“Don’t need to to enjoy it,” Alex shrugs.

“Okay, then. Thanks.” Steve holds the posture for a second, and then sinks back into his chair. They both stare out at the cold, glittering lights of DC for a bit, the night sky draping in heavy folds over the point of the Washington Monument. The glow from the lamps half-illuminates Steve’s face, paints his hair gold. Alex takes a long drink, wonders what he wants to say, but Steve beats him to it. “How’s the work going on the Princes Trust shelter in New York?”

Alex nearly spits out his whiskey, recovers himself just in time. “You know about that?”

Steve’s voice is full of suppressed laughter. He obviously knows just how stunned Alex is and is finding it deeply amusing. “I follow the developments on Twitter. It’s a good thing you’re doing. Your account is cool, too."

“Thanks,” Alex says. This is ridiculous, he’s a grown man he shouldn’t be getting all squeal-y, but…but Captain America, his seven-year-old self whispers in the back of his mind. _Captain America thinks you_ _’re cool._ “We’ve got a big fundraiser in a couple of months. You can come to the party if you want. Bring some friends. Make my boyfriend love me forever. He’s always wanted to have a chance to chat to you more.”

“Send me a date and I’ll be there,” Steve pauses, like he’s weighing something up, like he doesn’t quite know where to put the words.

Drunk!Alex is a horrible enabler. He knows this from experience. He still opens his mouth. “If there’s something you want to ask you can ask it you know. You’ve saved the earth more times than I have fingers, you have more right than most of the losers downstairs.”

“I’m sure the industry backers can be important sometimes.”

“Not everyone is Tony Stark,” Alex shrugs expansively. The whiskey and the sheer flat expanse of sky are doing weird things to his brain. “Ask, padawan.”

“I’m seventy years older than you.”

“I’ve had one more media sex scandal than you have,” is the only thing Alex can counter with. Steve's smile is quick and amused, the skin crinkling around his eyes. Yeah. If Alex were unattached he’d be all over this, no doubt about it.

“Kind of, well,” Steve looks down at the glass table, traces an invisible pattern with his finger, “I know we only just met. But you and Prince Henry are the only high-profile gay couple I know…”

“Um, Elton John and David Furnish? Tom Daley and his husband? Ellen and Portia?” Alex is about to start counting others off on his fingers, but Steve’s already cutting across him.

“In person, Alex." He runs his hand through his hair. “My boyfriend and I want to go public, we think. Well, we want to get married and to take a stand finally. We've waited long enough.”

Alex stares at him for a long moment, at his bowed head, at the softness on his face when he’d said the word ‘boyfriend,’ the face Alex full-well knows he makes when he thinks about Henry. “Your boyfriend being?”

“His name's Bucky.”

“Bucky Barnes? Yes of course, there’s no other Bucky, duh, sorry.” Alex rubs a hand on his forehead, pours himself another a whisky. He’s planning on staying in bed _all day_ with Henry tomorrow and maybe cajoling one of the chefs into making those excellent pancakes with the secret mystery ingredients. He can do that hungover. Anyway, this requires more alcohol. Bucky Barnes, aka the Winter Soldier, was until recently a brain-washed assassin. He's been in the wind since the fall of SHIELD seven years ago, the terrifying revelation of HYDRA lurking beneath of the skin of every single important institution. God that was a scary time. Alex remembers being yanked out of school, remembers the silent, tense wait in a safehouse for news of their parents, the political and legal battles fought as HYDRA was weeded out. Their Dad had gotten to the safehouse first, wrapped them up in huge bear hugs. _Fucking white supremacists,_ he’d said, holding them close. _Don_ _’t worry, mijos, we’ll get it sorted out._

(it was only years later on a 3am internet trawl that Alex had discovered all of their names on the HYDRA cull list. He’s never told anyone that he knows, not even Henry).

“No need to apologise.”

“I’m just being a drunk dumbass. Carry on.” Alex says in the tone of voice that normally gets him a smack with a pillow from June.

Steve shrugs, lifts his glass to his mouth. “Kind of just wanted to tell someone, really. Figured you’d get it, what with everything that happened.”

“The media can be brutal,” Alex agrees, to hide how ridiculously pleased he is at this utterly surreal situation. He’s probably not doing too good a job of it considering how hard it is to make his face behave. He doesn’t _need_ to grin like The Joker, _jeez._ “Hope you’re ready for that.”

“I don’t really care what the media have to say.”

“That’s a good start, but you still want to handle the story, you know? Narratives are powerful, use them wisely. But you already know that, and I know the Avengers have a world-class PR team so you'll be fine.”

“Good to hear it again,” then, as though something has been set loose: “Bucky got me one of the History, Huh shirts, after the scandal broke. We marched. Undercover, of course, but we were there. I just…” Steve puts his glass down, leans across the table to look Alex in the face with the full force of the Captain America expression on his face, passionate and focused and oh-so-intense. “Bucky and I were together in the war, too, and we wrote letters to each other, just like you and your fella. Ours didn’t survive, so there’s nothing to be leaked, but I can’t imagine how I’d feel if someone else saw those letters to him, if we’d gone through what you and Prince Henry had to. So I’m sorry, I’m so sorry that it happened, and I just want to say that if the two of you hadn’t come out, I don’t think Bucky and I would be considering it. I mean, I would’ve, fine, I’ve been here for seven years now. Bucky’s different. He’s got a lot of trauma. But you, you guys gave him hope, and because of that you’ve given me hope, and the two of us have decided to come out too and I couldn’t be more grateful. I'm tired of hiding, of pretending to be someone I'm not. I love him, I'm proud of him, and I want the world to know it.”

Alex sits in silence for a moment, and then reaches out to pat Steve’s arm.

“I don’t really know what to say to that,” he says, “but thanks. Means more than you know to hear it. It was a shitty time, but I just decided if we helped people then I wouldn’t change a thing. So, yeah. Cheers.”

“Cheers,” Steve says, clinking his glass against Alex’s and drinking.

They talk for another hour or so - about their respective boyfriends, sure, but also about politics, and aliens, and Star Wars, of which Steve is apparently a huge fan. They make their way through the whole bottle of whiskey and the world is hazing out around Alex, refracting pleasantly into rainbows around the edges. What an awesome thing it is, he thinks, to be sitting on the Truman balcony making friends with Captain America. What a world they’ve managed to create where this is possible.

Eventually, there are footsteps, and then a beloved, familiar voice is laughing, “Hello sir, is this drunk person annoying you?”

“I’m not drunk,” Alex slurs, and then Henry is right _there,_ up in his space. Alex rests his head against Henry’s stomach, refrains the urge to purr like a cat when Henry pets his hair. “When did you get in?”

“Just now. Amy told me where you were.”

“Cool,” Alex yawns.

“I think that’s a sign it’s bedtime.”

“Sex-time, you mean,” Alex tries to start unbuttoning Henry’s shirt, but his fingers keep skidding off the buttons. Why won’t they _stay still,_ goddamnit?

“I think that’s my cue to leave,” Steve says from across the table, his voice warm with amusement. “It was lovely meeting you, Alex, Your Royal Highness. I’m sure I’ll see you both again.”

“Sorry,” Henry is saying. “He’s not normally this inappropriate around other people.”

“I’m always inappropriate.”

“Yes, darling.”

Steve laughs and then is gone, and Henry is detangling Alex’s arms from around his middle, lifting him up and sitting back down in the same chair, pulling Alex onto his lap. Alex leans in for a kiss and misses by about a mile. “You are deeply hilarious. Lucky Steve has a sense of humour.”

“Lucky," Alex mumbles. "I invited him to Princes Trust cause you want to be his friend."

"You did?" Henry kisses the tip of Alex's nose, holds him close. Alex would really like to be kissing Henry about now because cuddles make him want to sleep when he’s this drunk. “You're the best. You know that?”

"Of course, I'm fucking awesome."

“What was that?”

“I'm the best person in the world.”

“Okay, that was more yawn than English. Come on, bedtime.”

Alex finds himself deposited on his feet, swears sleepily at Henry in Spanish and refuses to move until Henry scoops him up and carries him into the residence, past Leo and down the hallway into their bedroom, dumping him gracelessly on the bed. Alex is asleep before he even gets his tie off. Not, he thinks, when he wakes up the next morning in his boxers with a very warm Henry curled around him, that Henry minded.

*

Steve comes to the Princes Trust anniversary in a yellow History, Huh? T-shirt splattered with paint, hand-in-hand with a scowling Bucky Barnes, whose dark hair is scooped into a bun, _fuck-off_ seared into every line of him. They’re both sporting gold bands. Henry puts his arm around Alex’s shoulders and whispers, “What do you think?”

“I don’t think a white dress would suit me, honey,” Alex says, turning into the embrace to kiss him. Somewhere a camera flashes in blaze of dazzling fluorescence. “And anyway, we’ve already had the kid. Kids. Plural.”

Henry snorts, and then they get caught up, separated, talking to various activists and donors and journalists and eventually Alex manages to get over to where Steve and Barnes are talking earnestly to the head of New York Transgender Advocacy Group. Well, Steve is talking earnestly. Barnes is standing and doing a fantastic impression of a brick wall. Alex sidles up next to him, making sure that Barnes can see him coming. Ex-assassins and all, don’t want to go startling the stabby type.

“Hi,” he says. “I’m Alex. Congrats on your recent nuptials, you officially beat me and Henry on the trending hashtags.”

Barnes blinks at him for a second, and then says, “how much gayness do you think it would take to break the internet?”

Alex beams. “Be my friend, and we’ll bring down Twitter?”

Barnes regards him for a second and then offers his flesh and gold-ringed hand to shake Alex’s seriously. “Looks like you got yourself a deal, FSOTUS.”

Steve breaks eye-contact to give them a despairing look. Alex waggles his eyebrows and tows Barnes off in search of the cake he knows is hiding out back somewhere. It’s the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

**Author's Note:**

> Tumblr with me: @barefoot-pianist - would love to hear from people! Hope you're having good evenings :D


End file.
